Sport and Health

It is a common assumption that sport is good for us and that participation in sport embodies public health benefits. This book critically examines the rationale and evidence for sport as a public health policy tool. It looks at sport interventions across the lifespan, for biological, psychological and social benefits.

Daniel Parnell is a Senior Lecturer in Business Management at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. Dan is a collegiate scholar with a growing reputation for current, policy-relevant, empirically-rich research in areas that closely connect with sport business and management, who engages closely with the sport industry and can connect across multi-disciplinary areas and research programmes. Dan manages a number of research projects involving managing change and project evaluation using both quantitative and qualitative research methods regionally and internationally. He currently works with a number of professional sport clubs and national governing bodies in England and internationally. He has worked with the Premier League, Football League, Football Foundation (United Kingdom's largest sports charity) and the International Olympic Committee on research with policy makers, commissioners, chief executive officers, managers, coaches and participants. Currently, Dan leads the research on a unique Masters in Sport Directorship executive education programme, coordinates a global platform for football researchers as a founder member ('The Football Collective') and is the Research Director for a platform to share community sport research with policy makers and practitioners ('Connect Sport') Peter Krustrup is Professor of Sport and Health Sciences at the University of Southern Denmark and an Honorary Visiting Professor at Exeter University, UK. Peter has authored 225 original research articles, with a total of 9,000 citations, and has got an H-index of 49. His three main research areas are: muscle physiology, human performance and health effects of sports. Currently, Peter is continuing his pioneering work on the fitness and health effects of football and other team sports. His research includes investigations of the cardiovascular, metabolic and musculoskeletal effects of team sports compared with other types of physical activity (PA), and the potential of team sports for preventing and treating lifestyle diseases. He achieved the UEFA Pro Licence in 2017 and worked as assistant coach for the Danish Women's National Team that won a bronze medal at Euro 2013. He is an editor for the European Journal of Applied Physiology and the British Journal of Sports Medicine and has acted as guest editor for two Football for Health special issues of the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports. He was chairman of the organising committee for the World Congress of Science in Football in 2015 (WCSF, 2015) and the Copenhagen Consensus Conference 2016 on Children, Youth and Physical Activity. He has received several research dissemination awards, including the Men's Health Award and the Faculty of Science Media Award

Introduction [Daniel Parnell and Peter Krustrup] 1. Is sport good for us? Understanding youth sport as a public health setting [Richard Bailey] 2. Sport, health and PA in children [Tara Coppinger] 3. Positioning physical activity and sport in a child-friendly manner [Ed Cope] 4.Older adults, physical activity and public health [Andy Pringle and Stephen Zwolinsky] 5. Health through state supported voluntary sport clubs [Søren Bennike, Lone Friis Thing and Laila Ottesen] 6. Psychological benefits of team sport [Johan Wikman, Peter Elsborg and Knud Ryom] 7. Mental health, physical activity and sport [Simon Rosenbaum, Davy Vancampfort, Oscar Lederman and Brendon Stubbs] 8. Sport, physical activity and public health policy [Bob Snape and Kathryn Curran] 9. Sport and health: The unique challenge of elite sport [Shawn M. Arent and Alan J. Walker] 10. Sport and health: The prevention and treatment of non-communicable diseases [Peter Krustrup and Morten Bredsgaard Randers] 11. Healthy sport consumption: Moving away from pies and beer [Keith D. Parry, David Rowe, Emma S. George and Timothy J. Hall] 12. Healthy stadia: A settings based approach to health promotion [Daniel Parnell, Kathryn Curran and Matthew Philpott]